The Perfume Lover
A Personal History of Scent
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Perfume Lover is a candid personal account of the process of composing a fragrance, filled with sensual scent descriptions, sexy tidbits, and historical vignettes.
What if the most beautiful night in your life inspired a perfume?
When Denyse Beaulieu was growing up near Montreal, perfume was forbidden in her house, spurring a childhood curiosity that became an intellectual and sensual passion. It is this passion she pursued all the way to Paris, where she now lives, and which led her to become a respected fragrance writer. But little did she know that it would also lead her to achieve a perfume lover's wildest dream: When Denyse tells famous perfumer Betrand Duchaufour at L'Artisan Parfumeur of a sensual night spent in Seville under a blossoming orange tree, wrapped in the arms of a beautiful man, the story stirs his imagination and together they create a scent that captures the essence of that night. As their unique creative collaboration unfolds, the perfume-in-progress conjures intimate memories, leading Beaulieu to make sense of her life through scents. Throughout the book, she weaves the evocative history of perfumery into her personal journey, in an intensely passionate voice: the masters and the masterpieces, the myths and the myth-busting, down to the molecular mysteries that weld our flesh to flowers.
Now, just to set your nostrils aquiver: Séville à l'aube is an orange blossom oriental with zesty, green and balsamic effects, with notes of petitgrain, petitgrain citronnier, orange blossom, beeswax, incense, and lavender, and is now available at fragrance outlets in the U.S.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When a Parisian perfume designer, Bertrand Duchaufour, invited blogger Beaulieu to his lab, one of her memories launched their collaboration on an actual fragrance. Their process provides focus for an intoxicating book that interweaves both perfume's and the author's personal histories. While Duchaufour teaches Beaulieu, she draws upon a perfume fascination founded in her suburban Montreal upbringing and gradually developed via her childhood style-muse neighbor, school and university friendships, travel to France and Spain, and her lifelong relationship history. Beaulieu makes brilliant use of such diverse subtopics as prerevolutionary France, 20th-century fragrance icons, their products, and later-generation fragrances, changing gender ideas and their connection to perfumes, the relationship between perfumes and fragrances in other products, and the contemporary mania for celebrity scents.